Currently, there is an unprecedented global demand for energy for industrial and economic development in several high growth regions of the world, and this demand has exceeded in many instances the total capacity of production of fossil-derived energy sources including crude, natural gas, and coal.
When alternative energy sources are factored into the energy supply/demand equilibrium, that is, nuclear, biomass, wind, solar, geothermal and hydro derived energy pools, it is still possible that demand exceeds production capacity. Fossil energy sources are now increasingly explored and mined in far-flung regions that is substantially further away from its demand markets, and in some circumstances, these energy sources are discovered in regions where overall operating environments may be difficult. In the field of natural gas exploration and development, substantial technology has been developed for gas liquefaction to convert natural gas into denser liquefied natural gas (LNG), or directly into hydrocarbons that is easier to transport using marine vessels.
These hydrocarbons may include methanol, light olefins, gasoline, diesel, heavy wax fuels etc. Upstream technologies developed for the oil industry include marine vessels (offshore oil rigs, submersible platforms, etc.) that can drill to depths that was not possible just one decade ago, and various downstream technologies such as dedicated floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels that can perform a variety of refinery and storage functions.
While the energy environment remains competitive and at times challenging, great potential can be found in still unexplored areas of the world include the Arctic/polar regions where undiscovered oil and gas reserves are estimated at 25% of total world supplies. Significant developments have also been made in the areas of tar sands and shale oil recovery to yield syncrude (synthetic crude).
Additionally, a gradual realization of an apparent acceleration of rising temperatures in almost every major part of the world have convinced many that the continued use and subsequent pollution of heat trapping gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) cannot be reasonably sustained without dramatic implementation of technologies in the area of environmental regulation, emissions control, carbon sequestration/storage, and simply using fuels that are derived from renewable resources.
It is now estimated that a small elevation in global median temperatures can trigger varying amounts of flooding and sea level readjustments especially to coastal regions, and with large number of urban population centers also located at these places, along with their industrial infrastructure including power generation, transport, factories and manufacturing plants, this presents a potentially massive shift in locating these critical facets of the industrialized states to locations where the mentioned effects are less pronounced.
Marine vessels ranging from container ships that can travel between continents and vast distances to maritime vessels that are simply moored or anchored to body of water, such as storage platforms or ships that can function of depositories for energy assets such as crude oil, or to conduct drilling of energy reserves found deep within the depths of the sea. In addition to ships that either perform transportation of energy, there are vessels that can drill and extract energy, and further “production” vessels that can convert the extracted energy such as natural gas, into denser or more suitable forms, such as methanol, LNG, etc.
Molten metal, especially molten iron, molten metal melts, baths are well known and are used as gasifiers. High temperatures in such baths rapidly decompose, by thermal action, a variety of solid, liquid and gaseous feedstock into hydrogen and/or carbon oxides—the gas product is also known as syngas, comprising hydrogen and carbon oxides (mainly CO).
Such a molten metal gasification system, if operated on terrestrial land, would require large quantities of cooling water, and in some cases, availability of cooling water can result in operational failure or safety hazards if operating temperatures are not properly regulated. Economically, a cooling system on such a terrestrial gasification system may offset any cost savings in its advantages (compact, efficient, etc).
Depending on the quality and composition of the feedstock, the syngas produced from conducting gasification of feedstock in the molten metal may be varied, and will cause operational problems in developing an optimal hydrocarbon product from its second stage catalyst reaction.
Additional and very large quantities of hydrogen, such as those present in water or ambient air, may be required for proper gasification and production of a syngas.
In this case, the operation of the molten melt gasifier may require large quantities of water or air either in a steady flow rate or in periodical time blocks, especially in the operation of the containment vessel since temperature regulation is required for safe and reliable performance.
Further, due to the large amounts of electrical energy required for starting and maintaining molten metal, cost of energy may vary due to cost of energy generation. For example, cost of energy production on a marine vessel may be lower than that of producing the energy on land, depending on the fuel source.
In one of the most troubling aspect of locating a high cost plant in a particular territorial domain is the potential of riots, possibility of nationalization of plant assets, and problems of shipping end product to multiple end users within a suitable schedule.